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September 1st, 2005 06:00
Swapping RAID Drives
Hello All
The system is an 1600SD with a 4 channel CERC card and 2x120Gb ATA drives. These are configured RAID1 and partitioned with C: 12Gb and D: taking the balance.
We had an "excursion" which fortunately did not result in data loss hovever we have discovered that the drives are standard desktop units and we are not happy about long term stability. Conseqently we have installed 3x160Gb server ATA drives along side the one existing 120Gb drive remaining. The qestion is how best to get the new drives into service as 2x160Gb RAID 1 plus one hot spare. The existing drive will be retired.
Can anyone please confirm that the following procedure is acceptable.
Configure volume 0 as 120Gb existing drive plus one 160Gb in RAID 1 plus 160Gb hot spare.
Fail the existing 120Gb and rebuild onto the 160Gb hot spare.
Expand the D: partition to fill the capacity.
Add last drive to array as hot spare and remove redundant 120Gb drive.
Is it really as simple as that?
The system is an 1600SD with a 4 channel CERC card and 2x120Gb ATA drives. These are configured RAID1 and partitioned with C: 12Gb and D: taking the balance.
We had an "excursion" which fortunately did not result in data loss hovever we have discovered that the drives are standard desktop units and we are not happy about long term stability. Conseqently we have installed 3x160Gb server ATA drives along side the one existing 120Gb drive remaining. The qestion is how best to get the new drives into service as 2x160Gb RAID 1 plus one hot spare. The existing drive will be retired.
Can anyone please confirm that the following procedure is acceptable.
Configure volume 0 as 120Gb existing drive plus one 160Gb in RAID 1 plus 160Gb hot spare.
Fail the existing 120Gb and rebuild onto the 160Gb hot spare.
Expand the D: partition to fill the capacity.
Add last drive to array as hot spare and remove redundant 120Gb drive.
Is it really as simple as that?
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warwizard55
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September 1st, 2005 16:00
Hi Brunel,
Yes it could be done that way, you'll miss out on 40 GB of new space.
You could go ahead and create a 160 GB RAID 1 using two new drives, and create a S/W mirror in the O/S between the original and the new array... once done copying, you could break the mirror and edit the boot.ini on disk 0 to let you choose to boot to disk 0 or disk 1, do the same on disk 1. Test booting to the new drive, Extend the D: partition to use the new space, assign your hot spare and put the 120 GB on the shelf as a fall back. You then delete the dead array, and the new array becomes disk 0, so leave disk 0 as the default on the timeout on the selection in the Boot.ini.
There is something to be said for providing for a system restore using a backup device (whether that is a NAS or TBU, I do not care), Dell support keeps telling me that RAID is not a replacement for backing up my data.
Ok possiable problems with either approach:
Media errors may exist on your remaining 120 GB drive, if happening in a used area, this will involve a double fault condition, and there will be some corrupted files. In this case neither approach is advised, the rebuild will fail in your approach, and you'll have unidentified corrupted files with mine. The fix is to reinstall the O/S to the new array (you can enlarge the C: partition at this time if needed), and copy the data you need from the original disk, verifying it's intregrity as you go. Backup applications can verify files, and there is one embedded in the O/S.
warwizard DCSP